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Speaking about his bizarre decision to remake the Coen brother’s dark 1984 noir thriller Blood Simple as a slapstick comedy set in ancient China, Zhang Yimou, explained that he decided to make a highly commercial film in an attempt to battle the Hollywood majors for a share of the rapidly expanding Chinese market.   In the past, the overseas market had been the source of most revenue for his films, but with the dawn of a new decade beckoning, Zhang now believed that a film could earn 10 times domestically what it could overseas.

The film, A Simple Noodle Story, is a broad, slapstick comedy set in a remote noodle shop in ancient China.  The era was chosen for the sake of convenience because Zhang felt more freedom was given to films set in the past.   Despite featuring comedy and song-and-dance numbers the Coen’s storyline remained intact and Zhang even used identical shots on occasion.   The cast included top Chinese comedians Zhao Benshang and Xiao Shenyang.

The film marked another unexpected turn in the career of 58-year-old Zhang Yimou, once an auteur whose films such as Raise the Red Lantern and To Live were seen as incisive political allegories which were screened mainly in art-houses.   In 2008, Zhang staged the spectacular opening ceremony for the Olympic Games, possibly the most viewed television event ever, and also the games’ closing ceremony.   He then went on to direct a huge military parade to commemorate the 60^th anniversary of the revolution in China.   While the scale and success of these spectacles won plaudits around the world, they also gave rise to questions as to whether Zhang had become the Chinese government’s ‘artist in residence.’

While the release of A Simple Noodle Story would probably continue to mark Zhang as a new hero of the ordinary Chinese people it was unlikely to satisfy the more cultured audience who followed his earlier career so closely.

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